Women In Catholicism

If this is really the best that Kathryn-Jean Lopez can offer in defense of the Catholic hierarchy's subjugation of women and treatment of nuns, it's pretty sad. She has no arguments. She just has the reflexive defensiveness of the dumb and the orthodox. Every now and again, you get a glimpse into the intellectual quality of the forces of reaction in the church. It is largely execrable - as anyone who has to listen to the Benebots being churned out in today's seminaries will testify.

And then you realize that this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start ... and now we're left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore, defending orthodoxy because, well, any critique amounts to "anything goes." Really - pathetic.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.